Simple databases were developed by IBM Corporation several decades ago. The relational database management system (dbms) was the dominant database model until object databases were developed. Object relational databases and distributed database systems are now the paradigm. Computer systems now use active storage in which the database is the core of the system and microprocessors are simply embedded in the hard drives for database control and management. Advanced systems such as the U.C., Berkeley Telegraph Continuous Query (CQ) model of dynamic database organization represent further developments of this database tradition. The main uses for these types of databases are data storage, data updating, data queries and data outputs. Oracle Corporation has developed database architectures that use temporal data by updating known temporal fields as the conditions of the data sets undergo change. Finally, the CHORO CHRONOS project in European research universities has sought to develop spatio-temporal databases that use and organize spatio-temporal data objects. Spatio-temporal data objects are complex data sets represented in databases that change position across space and time.
All of these dbms's are typically static in nature. Once they are programmed, data is input and output within a preset organizational structure. This model is useful for simple applications. But as multitudinous data sources become ubiquitous, the limits of this static model become obvious.
What is needed is a complex distributed dynamic database model that is adaptable, scalable and capable of evolution and reorganization. As computer systems become linked in the next generation, this model distributed computer architecture will behave like an organic system in nature. In fact, the biological theory of evolution is precisely the model for complex collective self-organizing intelligent computer systems.
Whereas there have been numerous advances on small parts of computer systems, there has been relatively little progress involving the management, control, automation and synthesis of complex aspects of very large scale dynamic systems. The present system fills this important gap.